Christmas and citizenship

Last night was the First Presidency Christmas Devotional and if you happened to miss it last night I suggest you watch it, it was wonderful. I have really been enjoying a less comercialized Christmas thus far this year.

The other thing is that we had quite a good lesson yesterday on citizenship. We discussed religion and politics and how the two perhaps should or should not go together. This section in the Doctrine and Covenants lays out the Churches stand point on politics and government. We talked a lot about the fact that in many other countries there is not the same religious freedom that is available in America and also how religious freedom is becoming threatened in America. It's strange and a little sad to realize that with so many freedoms, there is sort of a one way street of the freedom and it's a very important and perplexing matter. Due to the time of year it also came up that people get so offended by being wished a "Merry Christmas" yet in our experience people who didn't celebrate Christmas by being wished Merry Christmas any more than we ourselves would feel wronged in being wished a Happy Hanukkah, etc.
Besides these strange occurrences of our world, we also talked about the fact that most of us were far more familiar with the officers of the Church than we were with the leaders of our government. I think that one of the growing problems we face in America is that so many of us do not take enough interest in our government, do not take enough action in our government. I remember my poly-sci teacher talking about the same sort of thing. The founding fathers designed our government to work on checks and balances but they don't work so well if we the people don't take charge to make those checks and balances. I have been so enamored at the Suffragette movement and how hard those women worked and how much they suffered in order to get that vote, but despite that, I'm ashamed to say that the first election I participated in, and the only one to this point, was the presidential election of 2008. I honored these women yet I didn't use the right that they fought so hard to win.
I think that laziness factors in a lot to why so many of us do not use our rights to make our say heard and to protect the freedoms that we love. It takes a fair amount of doing to stay informed with politics, I find that there is also a lot of unpleasantness to wade through in order to become informed. Voting is also something that you have to go a little bit out of your way to do, there are certian places you have to go to vote and they might be a little out of your way. I am going to resolve, once again, to be a better citizen and be involved with my community and my country. I think a good place to start might be to see about getting registered to vote where I currently live.
I didn't realize that this would be such a long post.